An agricultural harvester e.g., a plant cutting machine, such as, but not limited to, a combine or a windrower, generally includes a header located at its front portion and operable for severing and collecting plant or crop material as the harvester is driven over a crop field. The header has a plant collecting mechanism, e.g., a rotatable reel, and a plant cutting mechanism, e.g., a cutter bar or sickle blade assembly. Traditional rotatable reels include one or more tine bars with tines extending forwardly from the tine bars and towards the crop to be cut. The tines are configured to sweep crop towards the cutter bar as the header moves through the crop field and assist in collecting crop that have been cut by the cutter bar by pulling the crop onto a collection surface, e.g., a draper belt.
Typically, the rotatable reel is supported with two reel arms, i.e., support arms, one located on each side of the reel. As headers get larger, so do the rotatable reels or the number of reels on the header. However, larger reels may be too large to be supported by two support arms. Thus, additional support arms are used to support the larger reel. In addition, a split reel, i.e., two smaller reels, can be used to more evenly distribute the weight of the reel. However, having more than one reel requires separate driving mechanisms which can cause the tine bars to go out of sync during use or construction thereby causing inefficient crop collection.
Therefore, what is desired is a header capable of accommodating for changes in terrain while still maintaining efficient crop gathering. When the disclosed exemplary embodiments are used in combination with an agricultural harvester, the embodiments overcome one or more of the disadvantages referenced above by providing a header having a reel arm connected to a rotatable coupler for keeping the motion of tine bars and placement of their tines in sync.